1/18/2011

SONIC and TXT offers

my call to the customer number last week was passed along to corporate internals ... my question was, essentially "what's the deal with these different TXT numbers?" ... because at one SONIC you're asked to TXT "SONICLV12" to 411427 and at another you're asked to "SONICLV13" to the same number.

i got this response (in its entirety) yesterday:

We only distribute text coupon offers through Sonic Cruisers. There are local text promotions from our franchisees but we don’t always know when and what those offers are.

ignoring the fact that the letter shows no formal opening and no closing (something i never would have allowed my employees to do in their customer related jobs), the content is interesting ... essentially it implies that the franchisees are allowed to run wild and do whatever they want.

this certainly explains why the CA SONICs seem bewildered when i had them a TXT offer -- it came from a different franchisee. what it doesn't say is whether or not the various las vegas SONICs are owned by the same people.

since i've already seen three different TXT codes (LV12, 13 and 3[i think]), i'm going to go ahead and run TXTs for LV1 through LV14 and see what happens. i suspect what i'll see is a dozen offers at once anytime something gets offered, but who knows?

and the response, in and of itself, is impressive. it means that the customer service number correctly handed off all my information inside, and then people actually got back to me ... all in a business day and a half. when was the last time that happened to you at any other american fast food chain?